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by Ladycat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 23:59:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whenever it hits, it’s a wall of pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back

Whenever it hits, it’s a wall of pain. 

Accusations of hypochondria, of hysteria and dramatics have followed him all his life, mostly because he’s fanatically good at taking care of himself. He doesn’t care if the others call it whining; he doesn’t _want_ them to see, doesn’t want to watch them fumble, horrified and guilty, so busy falling over themselves in their haste to help—almost always misguided and useless, of course—that he can’t even take the cherished invalid role. He has to struggle on and deal with it as quickly and quietly as he can.

He’s too damned busy to be laid out for long.

The hypoglycemia the others have finally started to believe. When Rodney stops craving sweets usually Ronon or Teyla will notice first and force him to have the lollipops both keep, Ronon often bullying the cooks into hurried chocolate cupcakes—sweet and starchy is often the fastest road to balancing things, no matter how much he wants to retch looking at the damned things. Sometimes it’s the more serious affects, usually when their daily apocalypse is even worse than usual, and after the one time he actually collapsed, lapsing into a coma for—he was told—a nerve-wracking couple of hours, no one really thinks he’s lying.

They still tease him, though. Asking for a little respect is impossible, in Atlantis.

With the proof of his hypoglycemia, his other more mortal issues are treated with more seriousness. It’s gratifying, of course, and helpful since it means that if he’s forgetful one day, chances are better that someone else will catch him before it gets too serious.

But that’s only for the things that could kill him.

Things like back pain? Please. That’s a conceit to explain his flat-out refusal to exercise and stretch the way his entire team is always on his case about, a way of cementing his place as a mad scientist, an actual exhibit of his being a hypochondriac—the list goes on.

Like red-hot excruciating pain radiating from the center of his back, locking him up immobile and cranky is something to _laud_ over others.

He’s flat on his belly, even if it shifts his hips into a slightly awkward position, because it’s actually more comfortable than being on his back. ‘More’ is an entirely relative term, at the moment, and right then he’s cursing whatever stupid administrative _prick_ that took vioxx off the market, and why Carson still pretends to follow FDA guidelines. It’s an international expedition. In another _galaxy_! Surely that rates a little bit of leniency.

Carson won’t even give Rodney strong pain medications. The amount of morphine they’ve all been on is too high for him to rate a little comfort while it feels like his muscles are eating their way through his bones, an acid burn that makes him want to throw up if he thinks about it for too long.

Face-down, Rodney can’t do anything. He can’t read. He can’t watch one of his laptops. He can’t do anything but stare at his own forearms or pillow, cursing the entire universe for its sense of irony and balance. He loves his genius, but times like these, he’d happily trade being dumb if it meant being _pain-free_ and stupid.

The door swishing open makes him twitch, shoulder muscle tensing a line of fire down his back. His breath hitches into a groan. “Who is it?” he snaps when he thinks his voice will be steady.

“Me,” Sheppard responds. He’s doing something industrially enough, the swish and thump and thud paltry indicators of whatever the hell it is. “Carson told me you were pretty miserable.”

“Carson is a fiend from hell, whose pact with the devil is going to curse Atlantis to the floor of the ocean.”

A slight pause. “So. No pain-killers.”

“Just advil,” Rodney moans, actively contemplating biting his own skin because he needs something to take the edge off his back. Except he’s done that, and he knows that after the first blissful moments where his forearm throbs like he’s stuck it with hot pokers, then his back kicks in and he hurts twice as much instead of just in one place.

Something hums into electronic life.

“Sheppard? What the hell are you doing?”

“Zelenka’s pretty pissed at you,” he answers without answering. More swishing, which sounds like—clothes being taken off? That’s possibly fevered dreaming, though. “He’s certain you’re doing this just to get out of the diagnostics you two were about to run.”

Normally, Rodney can brush this off. He can laugh and joke even if it’s caustically, needling Radek right back. Now, though, when he’s unable to move, unable to do anything, unable to _think_ because of the stabbing agony in his back, he feels something suspiciously hot and stinging like tears prick his eyes. His vaunted wit deserts him and all he can think is _still_ they don’t believe him? When he’d rather be anywhere than where he is?

“Hey.” Warm hands—almost scalding—rest gently on the center of Rodney’s back. “He doesn’t mean it, okay? We saw how you went down.”

“Yes, I believe the term is ‘felled-tree’. I was there, Colonel.”

“Actually, it was more like you crumpled,” he’s corrected, Sheppard’s voice soft and strangely intense. “Scared the crap out of everyone. Especially when you kept saying you were okay, just to wait a minute and you’d get up again.”

Rodney remembers that. He doesn’t remember much else, whiting out in pain until he’s in the infirmary, being told exactly the same thing he’s always told—rest, heat, muscle-relaxants and anti-inflammatories to let the swelling go down and the nerves return to their proper positions.

The minute he can, Rodney’s going to start looking for an Ancient cure-all. He _hates_ this. He hates it as much as he hates his allergies, closing his throat until his lungs feel tight, straining for air he can’t give them, body racing with jitters as everything shuts down, focusing on that all-important grab for air.

Rodney’s not going to deny he’s a control-freak. The knowledge that his own body constantly bucks that control is as close as he ever gets to being genuinely depressed.

There’s a click, softer and without the normal metallic tinge that colors everything about Atlantis and then— _heat_ , lots of it, a brilliant point of light Rodney can see behind his closed eyelids, teardrop shaped and placed directly on his spine where the pain hurts worst.

“Sorry it took me so long,” Sheppard’s saying, bashful like he’s ten years old and rubbing the back of his neck, feet scuffing dirt clouds into the floor. “I was pretty sure Teyla would have the stones, but I had to figure out a way to heat them up to a good temperature.”

Stones? Temperature? The words bleed together in Rodney’s mind, things he should be able to ask about, to parse understanding from without any questions, but there’s another blessedly hot thing—stone?—placed next to the first, over the disc that’s so angrily swollen.

He moans. “Sheppard—”

“It’s hot stones,” he says quickly, like he understands the confusion Rodney can’t fully comprehend. “They’re Teyla’s, and I jury-rigged one of Carson’s medical units. He’s actually kind of interested in how I managed it, so I have to give it back to him eventually. But he says heat is good when you’re in this much pain, and if you loosen up enough I’ll give be able to give you a massage later.”

A full thirty seconds pass before Rodney finally puts all the pieces together, understanding what Sheppard’s telling him—and by then the heat is starting to work, bunched muscle slowly uncoiling into waves of more pain, but a different, entirely welcome kind of pain. “Where’d you learn about this?” he asks, slurred and broken because it feels _good_ , like mindlessly wiggling a tooth until his whole body twangs with the potential for relief.

“My mother, actually,” he says, like talking about their families is something they do, as natural as the math they toss like footballs. “She always blames it on giving birth to me, but I think I was probably three or four when it went out the first time. I don’t remember much, but I _do_ remember what my Dad did to help.”

There’s a tremor of a darker emotion when Sheppard talks about his father, but his big, strong, familiar hands are flat against Rodney’s shoulders, heat and just enough pressure to be really felt soaking into abused muscles. Rodney moans, instantly distracted, and twitches hard enough to make him whimper.

“Easy, Rodney,” Sheppard says. He’s still just leaning, letting his nearness work with the stones, blanketing all the places that hurt, but Rodney knows pretty soon he won’t just lean but actually work those deft, long-fingered hands of his, the ones that spark fantasies he doesn’t tell anyone, working all over him.

It’s a promise of bliss.

One callused thumb, hard but still warm and yielding and perfect, rubs in an arch from Rodney’s neck to his spine, leaving a trail of sparks. “I got you,” Sheppard says. “Just relax, okay?”

This isn’t the first massage Rodney’s ever had, isn’t even the first by a coworker. But this is the first time he closes his eyes and mentally lets go of his body, trusting that Sheppard really _does_ have him. 

After all, he trusts Sheppard with his back all the time.


End file.
